Forget the Cannes critics. Xavier Dolan's It's Only the End of the World is
actually quite good. The Quebecois director follows the exhilarating
career-high of Mommy with this difficult
chamber drama, so whatever project followed such a masterwork would
inevitably suffer from the weight of expectations. World is a fine film in its own right, albeit a very
challenging one, and it requires a great deal of patience and emotional
investment from viewers as Dolan puts the audience in a vice grip and lets them
breathe only after tapping three. The effect is one of extraordinary release.
While It's Only the End of the World
is often utter hell to sit through, coming up for air rarely feels so
good.

The film marks a different turn for Dolan both aesthetically
and narratively, and it's probably for the best that he follows the high point
of his career by trying something new. This claustrophobic adaptation of
the play by Jean-Luc Lagarce recalls Tracy Letts' August: Osage County and the screen version by John Wells as it
corrals a dysfunctional family into a sweltering house for a few good hours of
screaming and yelling. The cause for celebration is the return of the
prodigal son Louis (Gaspard Ulliel), who comes home after a 12-year absence to
tell his family that he is dying. Cue the screaming.

Louis’s household is a fairly ordinary family. His mother
(Nathalie Baye) is a loud, flamboyant woman. With her lacquered nails and
vulgar finger foods, the mother (who remains nameless) could easily be the
sister of Anne Dorval’s Die from Mommy.
Her elder son, Antoine (Vincent Cassel) could just as easily be the grown-up
version of Antoine Olivier Pilon’s Steve from the same film, as he’s an adult
wild child—a hotheaded man with roaring energy and no productive outlet with which
to release it. Antoine, naturally, is the primary source of all the screaming
and yelling as the return of his brother, with whose sexuality he is extremely uncomfortable,
puts him on edge. The eldest son eggs on his mother and brother, but the
primary target for all his simmering rage is his stammering doormat of a wife,
Catherine (Marion Cotillard), who bashfully becomes an ally for Louis in this
hostile territory.

The youngest sibling, Suzanne (Léa Seydoux) is just as prone
to scrap and spit as her bigger brother is. Suzanne still lives at home and clearly
itches to escape the suburban malaise with which her mother is perfectly
comfortable. The poor mother, a shrill but well-intentioned matriarch, puts up
quite the spread in celebration of having the family altogether again, but the
day is an all-you-can-eat buffet of pent-up anger. What family get-together isn’t
full of tension and awkwardness?

There’s little to no mention of Louis’s and this absence
lies at the heart of Dolan’s adaptation. It’s
Only the End of the World is the talkiest script of Dolan’s career, and the
writing ranks as one of his better screenplays, for the adaptation sees the
characters spew endless chatter to fill the uncomfortable silence in which they’re
all vulnerable. Note how frequently they ask Louis about the comfort of his
flight or how often someone comments on the heat. Awkward babble keeps everyone
safe.

The power of the film lives in the pauses between the
dialogue and the delivery of the empty drivel the characters speak. The few
seconds of silence are wrought with sadness. A quintet of powerhouse
performances fuels the raw, searing power of It’s Only the End of the World as the five actors collaborate to
create a broken family in desperate need of repair. Ulliel is a strong and
reserved presence who quietly respects the urgency of the situation, while
Cassel’s percolating machismo fills the screen with tension. Baye’s maternal
role screams Anne Dorval, but the French star nevertheless fills the role with chattering
fervor and Seydoux’s stormy sister is an unexpected jolt of life. Cotillard,
finally, is a quietly heartbreaking presence as Dolan uses her watery doe eyes
to great effect as the abundance of close-ups in the film swell with energy.

As with Mommy, the
frames of It’s Only the End of the World
burst with emotion. Rather than shoot another film in novel 1:1 square aspect
ratio, Dolan films the drama in conventional widescreen, but the coverage
favours close-ups and tight framing. This aesthetic draws various layers of
power from the actors as their subtle facile expressions speak against the
words they banter. The truth of this family lives in what goes unsaid within
the chatter.

The tight frames also give It’s Only the End of the World its undeniably excruciating
claustrophobia. This home suffocates a visitor from the moment one enters the
door. One only needs to be in close proximity to these characters for a few
moments to realise why Louis had to escape. Dolan uses the oppressive space of
the film to create an overwhelming swell of catharsis and release in the film’s
final act as he moves the action out of the house for a brief,
adrenaline-charged interlude before returning to the scene of the crime for a
grim. The final images are a grim reminder that staying in this country home
would have been the death of the prodigal son. The last twenty minutes provide some of the most overwhelmingly powerful drama you'll see this year.

It’s Only the End of
the World differs from much of the Dolan canon by favouring dowdy interiors
and by eschewing visual flourishes as the director and DP André Turpin let the
actors’ faces do the talking and the depth of the 35mm stock capture their full
range of subtle longing. The soundtrack, however, is signature Dolan with a
great mixtape of 1990s pop songs and forgotten wonders transporting millennials
back to their days of youth. One fleeting moment of happiness in which Louis remembers
a former flame, meanwhile, gives a buoyant interlude of ecstatic sparkle and
Dolan flair. It’s Only the End of the World is Dolan’s most restrained and
demanding film, but it’s also one of his most rewarding ones.